A therapist's take on life, the world, you and me.

I Demand the Answer

I receive a steady stream of disaffected lawyers who want to change careers. They come to me for “the answer.”

The question is “how do I get out of law and do something different?”

What gets under my skin is the expectation this is going to be easy. It isn’t.

Remaining in law and looking for something better poses challenges. You realize by now you can’t call a headhunter and go to a “lifestyle firm” – they only exist in the imaginations of fee-hungry “staffing professionals.” Hyphenated jobs, like “environmental-law” or “entertainment-law” are misnomers. Choose anything fun and attach the word “law” to it – “food-law,” “sex-law” – and it’s still law. More realistic “remain-in-law” solutions, like an in-house position or a government job, are hard to find because everyone’s thought of them. You can get there with sufficient determination – but it’s tough and I can’t make it not-tough. No one can.

Getting out of law completely poses a new level of challenge – you have to figure out what you truly want to do with your life. I am indeed wise and all-knowing, but I cannot tell you what your purpose is on Earth. This is your journey – and you have to find your own destination. The process isn’t like opting for a legal career, where you hop on a train and go where they take you. I cannot talk to you for an hour and concoct some sensible, well-paying, fun, creative job, with status and money, that will make your heart sing and all your problems go away. Remember the last time someone promised that? Look where it got you.

I’m skeptical of “career coaches” and “out-placement counselors,” too. They can help you learn to interview and hone your networking skills – which is useful as you explore options. But you can Myers-Briggs yourself into a coma and still not know your true work. The task is tougher than getting “coached” or “aptitude tested.” There is no easy answer. It requires time, and a good deal of soul-searching.

You might need to flounder. That’s what people who aren’t “K through JD” do during their 20’s. As an adult child of the law, you may flounder a little later in the game than everyone else. But if you need to flounder and find yourself, don’t pretend it’s anything other than that. Saying you’ve “decided to write” doesn’t fool anyone. Taking classes in something creative might be a step on a path forward, but it’s only a step. Getting fed up with being a lawyer, and telling everyone you’re “writing” is like wandering around a cocktail party after you graduate from college telling people you’re working on a novel. Everyone will roll their eyes, and for good reason. They’ll assume you’re floundering – trying to find a new path. They may or may not respect your struggle, but they’ll know you have a ways to go before you can claim a hard-won title of respect, like “writer.”

Here’s my best advice for what to do if you’re a lawyer, hate it and want to do something else:

Probably, you hate it because it isn’t taking you anyplace you want to go. And probably, you’re terrified of giving up the money.

Pulling the plug on law money is scary. Especially with loans. It can get like crack – you keep promising yourself you’ll quit, and then another week goes past, and another. But you know if law is killing you – and if it is, you have no choice: You have to leave. Plenty of lawyers secretly hope to be laid off, just to get it over with.

Once you’re off the crack, your primary mission is to figure out who you are. Your authentic identity will pull you to your true work like a lodestone. Meaningful work doesn’t just earn money – it expresses your soul.

First – talk to everyone you know, and some people you don’t know, about what they do for a living. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Find out how they occupy every day, if they like it, and how they got there. Ask to talk to their colleagues, too. (Yes, this is called networking. It’s also called getting to know the world around you – the world outside a law firm.)

Second – make a list of people whose job you wish you had.

Third – do what they did – or whatever it takes – to get a job like theirs.

You might not make it all the way to where they got, but you’ll have fun trying.

Be prepared to encounter two new phenomena along the way: poverty and humiliation. Don’t worry, they’re not that bad, and it’s worth it.

People ask me how I stopped being an unhappy associate at Sullivan & Cromwell and transformed miraculously into The People’s Therapist.

It took ten years of humiliation, (relative) poverty, hard work and groping in the dark. I stumbled on talents by taking new risks. It wasn’t easy. There was a fair amount of crab-walking – not taking a direct path, but stepping in a direction that seemed closer to what I wanted, then turning and doing it again, and again. It’s indirect, but it gets you where you’re going when you’re not entirely sure where that is.

Believe me, when I say I’ve been there, I don’t just mean the hell of biglaw – I mean the struggle to get out of biglaw, which was tougher.

Getting the job you truly want – and are good at – requires inspiration, ambition and wanting it more than anything. There’s going to be profound, soulful work involved in this process. You will have to listen to your heart, follow it where it takes you, and be who you actually are. This will be the hardest and most satisfying thing you ever did.

That’s “the answer.” Or the best answer I’ve got right now.
========

This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

So very true – day to day living and finding “your” place is the world is the hardest thing we do. Like that modern Zen saying, “after the ecstacy, the laundry.” In other words, you had a thought/feeling/realization, that’s great – now what are you going to do in with it in your daily life?

As for your BigLaw clients, have you ever counseled them to stick with their jobs a bit longer — after all, as an ATL poster put it “For a liberal arts major with no real skills, show me another job where you start at age 26 or 27 for $160,000 a year.”

I think perhaps lawyers – or BigLaw Lawyers – or your particular clients want and expect too much. They want work to be ‘fun’, but how many real world jobs are fun? Is working at McDonalds fun? I’ve always somewhat envied those people on FoodNetwork and Travel Channel that go and eat around the world – but then one must remember that these people are long separated from friends and family. Is being a doctor fun? How many stressed out and angry doctors are there? Oh, I get it, your clients want money, prestige, (if straight men — women), and ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’ work. Almost no job on earth would ever satisfy them in reality.

Work never struck me as fun. It’s pretty much something that you have to endure if you don’t have enough money to not work.

I didn’t have any interest in being a lawyer. I just needed a certification from a T14 shool so that I could get a job with a high salary. I graduated in 2000, so that part actually worked for me. I figured out that I didn’t actually have to attend class or really work in law school, so graduation wasn’t a problem. They wanted everyone to graduate.

In hindsight, I should have attended class in undergrad and gone to med school so that I could make a much better salary and done work that might actually be somewhat intellecutally stimulating. I’m far better at math/science than I am at legal writing/argument. If I never had to write another legal document again, that would be just fine with me.

I’m actually much more bitter about my college experience, which was essentially the worst five years of my life, than I am about my experience in law. I truly despised college. I don’t wish college on anyone. I’ll take a mind-numbing 14 hour day in a law firm over college.

Oh well – I loved college. I was truly alive then with all the mental stimulation I could have ever wanted. I still look back on those golden “ah ha!” moments when I translated something really well and saw through the text into the context, poetry, structure etc. What I dislike about law is the sheer mental exhaustion. Take a person with a mind, spirit and goals and suck them dry – neither fun nor conducive to sustaining human life. There are likely other areas of work where a person doesn’t feel terminally ill often from the sheer drain and depletion.

I didn’t say this was going to be easy. And keep in mind that children don’t need material things nearly as much as they need happy parents who are a part of their lives. Poor people can raise happy children – and rich people can raise miserable children.

Wonderful piece. As someone who is about to take the plunge into a whole lot of floundering, it is refreshing for someone to be honest about this – I fully anticipate near “poverty”, some embarrassment, and some starting-over, but if this is what it takes to “get out” then so be it. Nothing that truly pays off can be easy.

Re: Les Habs: not all of us fit that mold. I was not a K-JD person, I worked for several years before deciding to go back to school. I don’t want a “fun” job (although it would be a great perk), and I don’t need a huge salary. I have paid down my loans substantially and could subsist on less. Instead I’m looking for a job where I don’t hate myself, hate the people I work with, hate the hours, and hate what the job has turned me into. I want to spend more time with my spouse, and spend more time outside of the office. I am willing to sacrifice pay to do that, and have no illusions about work being other than just what it sounds like — work.

Thats perfectly understandable — and there are plenty of jobs that I am sure fit that bill that you would or could do great in (school teacher comes to mind). A problem I notice from bitter lawyers is that when I ask them what else they want to do they are either vague or completely stumped, when I give alternative careers they find excuses to reject those, and/or their ‘alternative career’ is detached from reality. Not everyone can work at the State Department, CIA, the White House, etc., and if one was not good at math its beggar’s belief to think one would be killing it in investment banking if not for that dreadful decision to go to law school.

To a great extent, if not the greatest, the problem lies with the lawyers – not the law schools or the law firms.

Your comments about writing as an alternative career reminded me of some advice James N. Frey has in his book “How to Write a Damn Fine Novel II”:

“A smartly dressed woman in her early thirties came up to me and said that she had always wanted to be a writer. She said she had several good ideas for novels that she would love to write, but she had a problem [not enough time and family commitments].

“I suggested she quit her job.

“She smiled sheepishly and said she couldn’t do that. They had a big mortgage and her husband liked to travel…. Her husband would kill her, she said, if she quit her job.

“I said she should get another husband.

“She blinked with astonishment. She said I was kidding, of course.

“I was not kidding, I said.”

I think Frey is right, as is Will. Even though it comes with its own set of challenges, doing what you were meant to do is the only way to find that elusive feeling of satisfaction with life.

Great post. I agree with most of it, except the career coach bit. Not all of us think the MBTI and other aptitude testing is the answer. I spend most of my time trying to get clients to simply connect with who they really are and what actually fires them up, without the filters of money, prestige, and other externalities. That is the hardest part for many, if not most, attorneys I work with.

What you leave out is that you will not work a day in your life if you are doing what you love. Getting there is hard, but learning to tune in and follow your heart, not the money, will get you there. The money will inevitably come if you are doing what you were sent to Earth to do. It may not even show up in “the work,” but it will appear, and you will always have enough (plus loans can be deferred, trust me).

I struggled with all of this a few months back when, after four years of working non-stop for a top 10 firm decided I had enough.

Pulling the plug on the paycheck was the most difficult part. I still have over $100,000 in school loans. However, I had a lot of money saved up in my savings account. I put $500 in my 401k four years ago and had $300 in it when I left. I am grateful I avoided the kool-aid on the market.

I realized I loved being a lawyer but hated working for BigLaw. I also spent many months looking for a job, had a few interviews, but nothing caught.

I decided to go solo. It has been a different type of challenge. I am much poorer but so far, breaking even. I love counseling clients and being able to help people. I realized this is why I went to law school.

I don’t have any answers either. Everyday is a new day, a new journey into this life. It is as confusing as it is also quite rich.

I am not married, do not own property, and do not have kids. I am grateful everyday for those liberties. A loving marriage/partnership would no doubt be an asset though. One day.

Believe me that I still have moments of panic, more than I would like. But I have never regretted quitting. I feel like me again.

I want to thank you for acting as a light to so many of us. For those of us who can be brave, I can think of no better vehicle for public service — even spiritual service — than law.

First – talk to everyone you know, and some people you don’t know, about what they do for a living.

Where do I find people who aren’t lawyers? My family is all lawyers. My friends are all lawyers (except the guy who DJs at the strip club – and I’m not working there). I am not being facetious: where are these other people? Do you mean like the people at the grocery store, the pizza guy? I had a nice conversation with the lady who waters the plants here at the office yesterday, but I don’t think I can go into plant watering. Where do they keep all the people who aren’t lawyers?

As a biglaw partner who is (gasp) pretty content, I am usually not at all a fan of Will’s advice. But, this particular comment – brilliant, true and real. The only people I know in biglaw who are happy are the ones who are closely in touch with at least a few of the many “other” worlds that have absolutely nothing to do with skyscrapers and conference rooms. The strip club dj is not at all a bad place to start getting in touch, as long as you shed the pre-conception that you don’t have anything in common with him.

I would TOTALLY talk to the plant watering lady! When I was in Biglaw I used to gaze with envy at the people watering the plants and think “I bet they get to go home at 5. I wonder if they are happy. I wish someone would pay me even half my salary just to water plants. No eyestrain, you get to work with greenery…” Mind you, those are the typical thoughts of a caged associate, but still.

Did you envy their minimum-wage salary and their small living quarters in a probably not-so-nice neighbourhood?

“I wish someone would pay me even half my salary just to water plants.”

$80,000/year to water plants does sound like an awesome job.

This is what us non-lawyers and non-BigLaw lawyers get so peeved off about when listening to BigLaw associates complain. Its not that we, or in this instance, I, do not sympathise or understand how tough your job is and how much time it takes from your life. Rather, its the “woe is me” attitude many of them exhibit and the fact that they never had to take BigLaw jobs in the first place, but did, and perhaps “took” it from those who did their research, knew the reality of BigLaw, and were ready to do it anyway. Also, BigLaw complainers seem, to a large extent, unable to see how lucky they have it compared to other lawyers and yes to the plant watering lady who will never have the money saved for a decent retirement, school for her children, or a luxurious vacation abroad.

How do you get by with no income, $100K in loans, rent to pay, etc.? Yes, you don’t need a ton of money, but you need some, no? Should you shift this responsibility to your parents? To your spouse? Do you take an extremely low-paying job in the meantime, i.e. minimum wage, no benefits?

I’m glad it worked out for you. But I’m really skeptical as to how this could work for someone who is married and has responsibilities to someone other than him or herself.

I think Frey is wrong, by the way. Leaving your husband because you refuse to earn an income and want to indulge yourself is pretty selfish. Try writing on the side and see if you are any good, first.

Frey may have been rather blunt in order to make a point, which I see as the following, and which took me a long time to truly understand. Responsibility to spouse, to children, etc. is commendable but it cannot come at the expense of responsibility to self, and responsibility to self is not the same as self-indulgence. Indeed, if anyone is self-indulgent, it is to me the spouse who denies a partner’s need to explore what s/he is driven to do merely because it may involve some sacrifice.

In the long run, failing to be responsible to yourself by pursuing those things that make you feel whole causes things to unravel. I now wholeheartedly believe that being true to oneself ultimately makes someone better in all areas of life – better at the profession they ultimately settle on, better as a spouse, better as a parent, etc. And in finding what that is, a partner should be someone who supports the effort and jointly remains focused on the long-term goal.

I have a government job and all the same problems exist: long hours, petty opposing counsel, and having to be always on call so you can’t have a life. But there is no big paycheck to go along with it, so theoretically, it should be easier to leave…

No offense, but I seriously doubt you are doing the equivalent of 200-300 hour billable months on a regular basis. I know a lot of government lawyers, and hard work for them is not the same as hard work for us in the biglaw sector.

Re: P on Frey: As a writer who is a mother of a very unhappy young lawyer: So wrong on what Frey meant. What he was saying was that writing takes your all; not that you can only find yourself by giving up all else. Writers don’t find themselves by doing it; they are driven to it because they can’t help themselves (it is part of who they are), and that’s how, if they are not very cautious and keep their priorities straight (their published works are not going to take care of them when they’re old and feeble, but their well-loved spouse and kids might), they will lose the spouse. What Frey was saying was, “Lady, you can’t have it both ways, as far as I know.” Sadly, in the case of too many writers (for example, Hemingway, Fitzgerald), he was right, but there are many exceptions who did and who now excel at their craft while making sure their family lives reward all members. One very successful modern case in point: Orson Scott Card. One from the past: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I wasn’t K-JD, so I thought I had done my floundering. But looking back, I was actually flitting quickly from one serious, respectable, set-in-stone career plan to the next. The career equivalent of starting a new relationship immediately after (or even slightly before) every breakup, time after time.

Too bad it’s only after my parents downsized to a house without a basement that I’m figuring out I need to go through a period of unemployment or underemployment.

I’ve got a review coming up next week, which will not go well. I know the answer to one question- I’m not cut out for this place. The answer to another- what should I do, is going to take time. Thankfully, I have some money stashed away. I’m curious to see how this turns out.

I’m right there with you. I know that my review will be the end of my (short and painful) big law career, at least at this firm. So what now? Another big firm? A medium sized firm? Back to school?

A part of me dreads the idea of going to another firm. For every “good” day in big law I had two or three “I want to slam my head against the wall” days. But then I think, “why the hell did I go to law school if I wasn’t going to stick it out more than two years?” Am I seriously going to give up on this career after only two years? Before college I wanted to be a teacher or a psychotherapist but quickly ditched those as low paying dead-end jobs and went the 160k a year route. Should I take a second look?
I’m not sure where to go. I know I have it better than most.

I have about an equal amount of debt and savings. No kids. No wife. Still in my 20’s.

Great post! You succinctly describe the core issues and steps to discovering rewarding work. What you describe took me many years to learn. The irony is that I was stuck in a laboratory job that didn’t fit my core self and after a lot of self discovery, I realized that law was a perfect fit for me. Even more, I loved the work for BigLaw that I did for eight years. I only quit BigLaw because it got too hard with twin toddlers. I have a solo practice now that is very rewarding.

After leaving BigLaw I also took the time to create a website, lookilulu.com, for girls that asks happy women with rewarding careers key questions like what do you do on your job; what do you like and dislike; and how did you get to do what you do? I couldn’t find that type of information when I was growing up on a farm without contact with professional women. The site has over 60 interviews and a dozen interviews with happy women lawyers. It is possible to find rewarding work in the law.

I graduated with a BFA in acting from a respected school. I had 75,000 in debt. When I hear lawyers complaining about student loans, I have to laugh. Your education promises a shot at a job where you actually CAN pay them off, and in a matter of a couple of years, not 25. Try getting an expensive education where there is little chance of you actually making a living in what you were trained in, let alone enough to pay off your debt. (to add insult to injury, imagine finding out that the artistic director of your program acknowledged that marketable skills are reserved for Grad School!)

You wanna talk about working long hours? Try juggling multiple jobs; scheduling rehearsals, auditions, call-backs; taking classes to keep your instrument in shape; all with no job security, rarely any health insurance, you can forget any hope for a retirement plan.

It’s amazing to me that for people who should be so smart, they can’t figure out what makes them passionate about life. For that, I am truly thankful, and I think Mr.People’s Therapist is spot on. Find the thing that inspires you and go from there. Fail, fail hundreds of time trying to find it. it’s worth it.

These lawyers just need some perspective and a little but of humility. Clear up the myopia and go from there.

“Try getting an expensive education where there is little chance of you actually making a living in what you were trained in, let alone enough to pay off your debt.”

I think that applies to about 50% of law school graduates.

Try to imagine not having the ability to get a debt-liquidating BigLaw job. That’s the reality for many graduating law students these days.

Although I agree with your about the getting rid of debt comment if you actually have a reasonable well-paying job. It took me about 4 years to get rid of the $120,000 I had. I didn’t even consider leaving my MidLaw job (about $95K at the time) until I got rid of my law school debt.

I read your piece with interest, and I read the comments with even more interest. We have one person saying “it’s all of us, not just BigLaw”, another saying the government lawyers are feeling it too, and then another still inexplicably defending his 200-300 hour billable month lifestyle.

I went to a bottom tier law school, not because I’m stupid, but because I enjoyed college far more than I enjoyed class. I graduated in the top 10% of a very large law school class, and I did not pursue BigLaw jobs. Probably wouldn’t have been considered, but I disgress. I would have loved to start out making double the amount of my loans, but I didn’t. I started out making 40% of my debt load, gross. So, while I didn’t have the pressure of being always on or 300 billable hour months, I had the pressure of wondering if I would be able to maintain my credit rating.

I’m now a shareholder at an AmLaw 200 firm with a national practice. My feeling is that the key to happiness in the law is to be able to write your own ticket. And by that, I mean you need business. And the only way to get business is to either be the only one who does what you do (best of luck with that….there’s always someone more experienced in what you do), or to put yourself into a position to get your own business, preferably that someone else will do. That will allow you to pursue all those things you’d like to do. The heuristic side of the law. Learning about things you don’t know about that will challenge you. It seems to me you have a choice. Keep plugging away the way you’re doing it, and work yourself into a position that you’re the one in charge, then enjoy your life when you’re 50 or 60, or find your way out of law firms that bill junior associates out at $500 an hour and get into a position where you might actually be able to exploit that big rolodex of network contacts you’ve been hoarding since law school. Either way, find your path and follow it. Complaining isn’t a path, even if it does have its place.

Hi Will – I’m a partner in a law firm and usually find myself agreeing with you. I have seen the situation you describe especially acutely with the K through JD crowd, but I have a little different take on it.

I think that someone did these young lawyers a great disservice as they were growing up. Somebody got them hooked on the idea that they can have it all – that their work will be glamorous and always personally fulfilling and that it will pay them so much money that they can do and have anything that they want. In general, that everything will be perfect for them – that they will never have to make hard chocies in life, choices that come with a definite price tag attached.

Now, when faced with a hard choice of working really hard to have the money vs. not having the money but having a more agreeable job, their minds rebel. The future that was promised to them was that they could have both! Yet here you are telling them that they have to choose – and they have no experience in choosing … and paying the price. So instead they keep believing in the dream that they have been told that somewhere they can have both all the money they want and all the personal fulfillment that they want – both from their job. (Instead of from their family or outside work, for example.)

Another aspect that becomes apparent with the K-through-JD crowd is that they have not had the opportunity to hold a job for several years before working in the law firm – to recognize that every job has an element of “grind” after a few years, and that when you feel the element of “grind”, it doesn’t mean that something is necessarily wrong with the job – or with you. I have seen them work 3 years in law , reach the “grind”, then “discover” that what will really “fulfill them” will be to be a grade school teacher, for example, or to work with the poor. However, after about 2-3 years, that job again becomes a grind – as just about all jobs will.

Instead of feeding them fairy tales of complete fullfillment, someone should let them know that, regardless of job, after a while everything becomes a grind to an extent. You might be able to trade a “heavy grind” job like law for a “lighter grind” job, but it is still going to grind after a while – it’s not going to be a panacea of fulfillment, at least not for long. Also, having a lot less money is also going to grind you and your partner in different ways.

I want to respond to some of the comments on here that many younger lawyers are “complaining” because they can’t “tough it out”, and that they refuse to accept the fact that all jobs have an element of “grind” to them.

The fact of the matter is that the legal economy — the economy at large, really — has mutated tremendously over the last thirty years. If people in their late 20s and 30s had ideas that it was possible to become a lawyer, work hard, have professional colleagues, and have an upper middle class lifestyle, it was because they saw the previous generation of lawyers do just that.

What has changed, however, is the profession itself. The law has become part of the “winner-take-all” mentality where rainmaking partners take home $10 million a year while junior partners are forced to capitalize the firm and may be lucky if they take home $500,000 a year in a major urban market. Yes, that’s a lot of money, but when you add up the debt and the years of servitude that go into receiving such sums, the hourly compensation is not all that great.

To be as simple about this as possible, lawyers in their late 40s and 50s had far more economic opportunities than the current crop. They had to bill less hours, didn’t have blackberries, created far more collegial and professional working environments, and were probably just nicer to each other.

Then, someone somewhere discovered the magic of “leverage,” and you have a legal profession where associates have to bill far more hours with far more significant debt burdens, saddled with electronic equipment that requires them to be on call 24 hours a day. When I was growing up, I only saw doctors with pagers, because doctors save lives. Lawyers are important, yes, but they are not saving lives.

Management at modern firms want to believe that they are nice people. So they create these blame-the-victim responses to the large turnover, burnout, and ugliness they see in their associates. “They’re not working hard enough,” “they should have known better,” “all jobs have grind,” etc. Those are easy platitudes.

The reality — the cold hard economic reality — is the pyramid structure of the modern American economy, distorted over the past few decades by those at the top and at the expense of labor.

The American middle class is dead, and the attitude that killed it was greed. It was Reagan greed, Abramoff greed, dot-com greed, and Madoff greed. Those who survive current BigLaw conditions to climb the ladder are people who possess extraordinary families or mates who provide them with extraordinary emotional support to weather the Himalayan ascent. If you don’t have those things, you will not survive. A normal human being cannot weather greed for that long without being emotionally destroyed.

It didn’t used to be that way. And the conversation would be a lot more honest if senior BigLaw lawyers get the guts to recognize the system they have created. Will they?

I have to somewhat disagree with you. It is true the legal market has changed, in many ways for the worse, just as you describe. However, at least in BigLaw, long hours — much longer than the average job — were still required. I know older people [50s] who said they almost never saw their lawyer father. Things have gotten worse, but long hours are not a new phenomenon. Second, easy to blame “greed”, but the fact remains that what has truly made law a less cordial and financially healthy profession is the growth of law schools and the unfortunate reality that not enough people are predisposed to math and science. Guaranteed fed loans has driven up the price of education, enriched schools, and allowing everyone to go to college and then law school devalues the degree and makes the competition that much more fierce. The laws of supply and demand also mean that the glut leads to wage decreases and employees [law students] in this market thus have basically no bargaining power. And yes, the law partner is right — too many young people really did expect life to be easy and want job satisfaction, prestige, high income — but also work/life balance. This is folly in any age, pre or post Reagan.

NewSolo – I have to agree with some of what you have said, but there are some significant omissions. You are right that years ago the economic opportunities were better in that the supply of lawyers was more matched with demand – you typically did not see many lawyers out of work. That being said, lawyers as a whole made a LOT less money – even adjusted for inflation. Think $80K in today’s dollar for starting lawyers rather than $160K. Law paid OK, but not that much more than a lot of other things. Many associates were brown-bagging it for years. Admittedly, the loan debt was about half of what it is now, but it was still significant.

Also, collegues were sometimes far less professional than today – behavior that today would bring a discrimination law suit or a hazing lawsuit was pretty typical. Also, there was often far less hand-holding than today.

I will agree that the higher salaries – both on the associate and partner levels – have distorted the working environment today.

I don’t agree with regard to your comments about the American middle class.

However, I also want to point out that years ago most lawyers had some sort of jobs before they worked in the law firms. They often had high school jobs (which seem to have vanished in the k-through-JD crowd), and then worked most of their way through college and JD. That’s a considerable amount of experience that many new JDs don’t have today. I think that it gave them time to come to grips with “work” as opposed to “emotional fullfillment”. People just did not seem to have the belief that their job should satisfy all of their psychological demands as a human being – but it seems like a lot of people have that attitude now. I think that the work experience was important in helping them fit “work” into their lives. Now, graduates that have no experience with work seem to have trouble relating to work because they don’t have a lot of experience with it – and everyone has been feeding them rainbows and unicorns about how great the practice of law will make them feel.

Les makes some good points. The hours have always been long – and new lawyers were always just a phone call away (and believe me, you got called in).

However, the cost of law school has gone way up and there are too many graduates. Consequently, the supply and demand ratio is terrible. We should really be concerned with getting a better return on our student loan dollars by matching the available loan money with the number of job slots available – otherwise, it’s a “job bubble” like the recent housing bubble.

Just to offer a different POV – I grew up wanting more than anything to have very meaningful work that I felt passionate about. I didn’t expect to be rich but probably falsely assumed that I’d at least be middle class. As the most-degreed person in the family, ever, my family could accept nothing other than a MD or JD and money – meaningful work that didn’t come with money and prestige was for losers.

So, after 25+ years of hearing about losers and failures you can guess what I did – ditched things and went to law school. At least I make a decent salary. I’ve also come to the realization, probably like my father and grandfathers before me (since the women didn’t work), that work is often unpleasant, adult life is often unpleasant, and you just have to suck it up and deal. But boy do I mourn the idea of “deeply meaningful work” and my naive belief that there could be such a thing in the world. Oh well.

Hi MS – Just to be clear, I have nothing against meaningful work, but it seems like asking one’s work to 1) put food on the table and 2) also be meaningful is asking a lot out of one’s work! I like my work just fine – for work! However, it’s my kids and what I do outside of work that really makes my life meaningful – to me and to other people, too (I think).

I’m sorry to hear that you got browbeaten into getting into law – that’s never the best way!

“Things have gotten worse, but long hours are not a new phenomenon. Second, easy to blame “greed”, but the fact remains that what has truly made law a less cordial and financially healthy profession is the growth of law schools and the unfortunate reality that not enough people are predisposed to math and science.”

Hey…I’m better at math and science than legal analysis! Lots of us lawyers are better at them.

The fact is that law pays better than math/science. I ran mathematical salary projections when I was deciding to go to law school rather than try to work as an engineer or get a Ph.D. in engineering.

In hindsight (so far), this seems to have been a bad economic move. Although I currently have more legal work than I know what to do with (having to turn clients away), so my layoff risk (here in television ad based law) is very low.

Should’ve gone into finance. My father is an engineer and makes bank. I would add, though, while yes, there are lawyers who are good at math, most are not — at least not up to the level where they could’ve opted for finance or engineering instead.

I didn’t even really realize that finance, as a career, existed until after I got finished with law school.

I got as far as taking the GMAT, but my wife was already apoplectic about the fact that I had already gotten myself $120,000 into debt. It’s not like I knew what I wanted to go do with myself, so she wasn’t interested in me taking on another $100,000 for business school.

Say what you will about firms: they know the type of person they want to recruit. And at the top, they all want hard-working smart people.

So I have to disagree with you about expectations. I didn’t know a single person who thought they could kick back once they started working at BigLaw. In fact, one of the amazing things about the firm I used to work at were how talented and hard-working everyone was.

You are right that supply has expanded because of opening more law schools, but how many of those people are getting jobs at BigLaw? Debt burdens are common at Harvard, Yale, Columbia as much as any bottom tier school.

In fact, I fail to see how increased supply affects the BigLaw experience once you’re inside a firm. If a firm is a great place, why leave? If all you have to do is work hard to succeed, I can’t think of any meritocratic person who would ever leave a firm.

But associates — smart hard working people — leave in droves every year. And they are all replaced with cheaper, younger, fresher recruits every year. That entire conveyer-belt system was actively created by BigLaw management. You can’t blame associates or law schools for that system (although law schools are willing to sleep in that bed as well). Why care about your associates when you can easily replace them? Why care about anything other than profit?

Look: blame associates for being naive about the motives in a modern law firm. Blame them for not being economically shrewd when it comes to loans. But you can’t blame them for thinking that BigLaw rewards merit or is a collegial environment when this is the message that BigLaw spends thousands of dollars on every year at recruiting events. You can’t blame them for thinking they can have what their elders have, when economically speaking, they are asking for something that just doesn’t exist anymore. Don’t blame the young for the actions of their elders.

That’s true, but I don’t think “lack of business” is the reason why an average associate leaves, at least in my experience. And I think some firms are better than that than others in making associate career development a priority.

Part of the danger in having this conversation is painting too broad a brush stroke when it comes to firms.

But I think the same danger also applies to simply stating that associates are to be blamed for the working conditions that cause many of them to leave.

This may be a clash of anectodal evidence. I have known BigLaw associates who actually did not realize exactly how much work would be expected of them once in BigLaw. I knew plenty in law school — some who went on to big firms, some to small, some to none, who had aspirations of BigLaw but were completely clueless as to how much work was needed to be put in. I have, in fact, met some very smart people who swear to me that “I didn’t know!” Or had some egotistical reason to go to BigLaw: prestige, money, and yes, for men, women.

“But associates — smart hard working people — leave in droves every year. And they are all replaced with cheaper, younger, fresher recruits every year. That entire conveyer-belt system was actively created by BigLaw management. You can’t blame associates or law schools for that system”

Agree more with you here — but with some reservations. Yes, they leave in droves, but that is not the same thing as getting fired, they leave because the work is hard and they understandably hate it. It is not as if the firms take them, work them to death and then fire them (although they do that too, but the dropout rate is not all due to firings). Big Firms of course have created a system to maximize partner profit, and if they have to bleed associates dry — well so be it, that is what they’ll do. But the associates didn’t have to take the job in the first place, or they could’ve investigated it more before taking it, plus if the number of law graduates were fewer (let us not act as if ALL big law associates are from the T-14), new associates would have more bargaining power.

Agreed on the clash of anecdotal evidence, and we may simply have a different set of experiences.

As to your points about associates not having to take the job, I guess the larger issue is whether young lawyers deserve to have a legal profession where they can get a chance to work hard without having to be “bled dry” as you put it. Everything in the law is so extreme: the fact that interesting, profitable work comes with insane hours is just an equation that doesn’t make sense to me, or to a lot of other people. And the alternative shouldn’t be penury or debt-servitude. For me, these are symptoms of larger economic problems that we all should be discussing with our friends, colleagues, and representatives in various legislatures.

“I have, in fact, met some very smart people who swear to me that “I didn’t know!””

It’s a different kind of hard work.

Having your sole responsibility being to basically do well on tests and be intelligent to the responsibilities of the legal world of billable hours, office politics, and business development is a stressful transition.

“Or had some egotistical reason to go to BigLaw: prestige, money, and yes, for men, women.”

I thought that money/social standing was a major point of going into BigLaw.

“For me, these are symptoms of larger economic problems that we all should be discussing”

I agree, but I think a good place to start is not making economic reality bend to law graduates or prospective law students, but make the legal profession bend toward reality. As a Canadian, we do not, despite our liberal reputation, allow everyone who wants to go to law school to go to law school. In the US, there is some horrific hybrid — not quite socialism not quite free markets. Unlike Canada, the US Fed govt doesnt control the schools or keep costs down, but it doesn’t allow the market to rule either – no, instead it has the Department of Education and gives out grants, loans, helps subsidize private loans, and is waist-deep involved in the educational system, creating the market distortions of socialism without any of the benefits of government regulation of the market. If I may – Canada has been spared the worst of the US legal system not because it had Trudeau instead of Reagan, but because the CBA and the Canadian government won’t allow law schools to multiply throughout all the land on some idealistic notion that anyone who ‘dreams’ of being a lawyer is entitled to pursue that higher education.

Amen Les – Better management of the availability of student loans would help heal a lot of ills. It would be hard for large law firms to toss associates aside when there are only a limited number. You really hit the nail on the head with regard to describing our present system as ” creating the market distortions of socialism without any of the benefits of government regulation of the market.”

This is a wonderful piece. As someone who left the law, has gone through alternating periods of inspiration and floundering, and is still trying to find the path that is right for me, it’s reassuring to hear that all this crab-walking may amount to something tangible someday. Despite the frustration, I’ll take the floundering and the poverty any day over another day trapped in the prison of a law firm.

[…] though is for the lawyers who make the leap – expert guidance on what to expect from The Peoples’ Therapist: I receive a steady stream of disaffected lawyers who want to change careers. They come to me for […]

Thank you for this post. From a lawyer who is currently wandering around cocktail parties, saying she missed her calling and is going to become a writer, I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above… except maybe for the part where you said I wasn’t really going to become a writer 🙂

I have had more coffee in the last three months than I had while I was studying for the bar exam, and I am finally beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel that I am pretty certain is not an oncoming train.

Floundering is really not all that easy though.
It takes more for over-achieving individuals to flounder than to work 16 hour days.
I floundered at one point and during that time told people I am a writer.

They rolled their eyes but I didn’t care. Ironically, the not caring was strangely empowering. It made me realize I am a human being first and foremost and not the seemingly high-flying, powerful lawyer I am “supposed” to be because that is not who I am.

The floundering made me realize who I am and now I am where I want to be plus the financial freedom.

It’s time for your appointment

Will Meyerhofer, JD LCSW-R is a psychotherapist in private practice in TriBeCa, in New York City.
You can visit his private practice website at: www.aquietroom.com.
Will holds degrees from Harvard, NYU School of Law and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and used to be an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell before things changed...
Now, in addition to his work as a psychotherapy, he writes books and blog entries and a column for AboveTheLaw.com.